Hey everyone...I am new to homebrew and just completed my first brew over the weekend, but I had so much fun doing it, it got me thinking during the process. How do you add different flavors to the beers during the process? Would you include new flavors, i.e. honey or caramel during the fermentation process? I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I do like to understand things way in advance...any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance...

I am a fairly new brewer so I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I have spent a ton of time reading the recipes in the recipe section of this forum. After reading enough of them you should get a pretty good feel how other brewers do things. All part of the learning process

BTW I have tried several recipes from this forum and they turned out great.

You might learn a lot about making your own recipes by reading the book, "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. Then spend a bunch of time reading in the recipe section on this site to see how people mix and match ingredients to come up with new recipes, then finally study the tables of hop varieties and their properties and the tables that do the same for the grains.

Then buy a bunch of grains and go wild with designing your own. I've begun that journey by brewing 2 1/2 gallon batches, enough to get several samples spread out over time to see how the beer taste changes as it matures but not so much that I have to choke down 10 gallons of mistakes.

- Read a lot. +1 for Designing Great Beers - it's my Bible. Brewing Classic Styles by Zainasheff and Palmer gets high praise as well.
- Read this forum.
- Listen to the Brew Strong and Basic Brewing Radio podcasts.
- Use BeerSmith or other brewing software to do your calculations for you.
- Finally, brew a lot. Experiment a little and make mistakes.

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Stop using so much caramel malt. Your beer will thank you.(yes, Carapils is a caramel malt...so is Special B)FERMENTING

I've taken some of the recipes I've found on this site and modified them from what they listed to what I had on hand that was similar. You might want to start that way to explore how a small change in grain can flavor the beer differently before you go radical and brew something undrinkable.

Most of the flavors come from grains or other things added to the boil (honey/molasses/etc), not the fermentation. More typical "after fermentation flavors" come from things like fruit, oak, vanilla, bourbon, etc. Spending countless hours reading on here and experimenting with different grains has helped me a learn a lot. Keep in mind that it is easy to go overboard on some of the grains such as Caramel. There is lots of information on here as to what flavors different grains will impart on your beer.

If you have specific flavors you are trying to get I am sure people here could help guide you to the best way to achieve that.